


I leaned in, let it hurt, and let my body feel the dirt

by ashintuku



Series: I am dissonance waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, out of order timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 11:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11943522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashintuku/pseuds/ashintuku
Summary: When she was five, the supernova flared over her chest, bright and hot and beautiful, and her mother wept because it meant that above all the other soulstars,thisone would dominate her life.





	I leaned in, let it hurt, and let my body feel the dirt

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmates in this AU:
> 
> Soulmates are people who have a strong affect on your life - not necessarily romantic, not necessarily good. Just strong.
> 
> They are shown through different astrological symbols, and you know you're near your soulmate when the coinciding mark reacts in some way: ie warming up, 'singing', sharp pain, or causing a strong emotion.

The supernova on her chest burned bright and true the moment she met a little slave boy in the desert. 

Padmé rembered the stories her mother would tell her, as the little girl traced the stars and planets and moons along her skin with open curiousity and fascination. How the soulstars were people who she would love, and people she would hate; people who would change her life and her path, one way or another. 

Her mother was shooting stars across her eyes, and her father was a warm, comforting sun mirrored on the palms of both of her hands; her sister a supporting crescent moon that spanned shoulder blade to shoulder blade. When she met Sheev Palpatine as a young girl learning the politics of Naboo, the eclipsed sun resting on the small of her back felt like a thousand pinpricks; but she smiled, anyway, because he was kind and he promised her that she was going to do great things for the Naboo people – and really, she supposed, that was all she wanted. 

When she was five, the supernova flared over her chest, bright and hot and beautiful, and her mother wept because it meant that above all the other soulstars, _this_ one would dominate her life. 

To a younger Padmé, this meant they were her one true love. 

To the fourteen year old, she saw a hopeful creature in a dusty and barren world, and her heart ached for him. 

The constellation on her hip hummed like a lightsabre as Qui-Gon Jinn stepped closer to her and the boy, having left the boy’s master with a troubled expression; he stopped to talk to the boy, his expression somehow both closed off and tender, and Padmé left with a little wave and a small smile and the hope to see him again. 

~+~

He was born with so many stars on his skin, his mother called him _blessed_. 

Shmi had always been of the opinion that her little boy was a gift from the angels, though. He came to her, unannounced and unplanned, making her life so much brighter. He clung to her and listened to her stories every night, and then he went out and he taught himself so many things; her little genius boy, able to tear apart droids and build them back up better and stronger. 

He worked hard, earned his keep, and was a son to everyone who knew him even for a moment. Even Watto liked him, in his own way, and let him take scraps from the junk heap so he could build his wonderful creations. 

So when a Jedi came to their little port in Tattooine, telling her that her son was strong with the _Force_ – she knew her boy was going to be so much more than a slave. 

It did not stop her weeping, the stars around her throat fading one by one, as he was freed and taken away from her, never to be seen again. 

(It did not stop her weeping, those stars bursting back to life only minutes before her own was snuffed out; her hand on his cheek, so grown and handsome, her boy a man now. She was only thankful her last sight was _him_.) 

~+~

She was born with a sun on the back of her right hand. 

Whenever she would ask her mother about it, Breha would merely trace the sun and smile a little; but she would shake her head and little Leia would sigh the sigh of the forlorn child. 

She had comets on her left ribcage, and constellations on her right; a cool new moon, black and spherical on her neck. 

An entire meteor shower overtook her back, growing as she grew; new stars adding in as the years went by. 

Breha was the phases of the moon down the outside of her left thigh, her father Bail the smattering of planets that encircled her ankle just below it, but she knew that they were not the marks of blood family. 

The first time she met Darth Vader in the flesh, the comets on her ribcage cried out a cacophonous wail, and she sobbed to herself in her cell and denied her truths. 

And when a boy as bright as the sun reached out and grabbed her hand, her soulstar sang in harmony with his own; a moon, full, to match her, the two of them a pair. 

She knew he was going to be important. 

~+~

She could feel her life leaving her, even as she fought, even as she cried out in the birthing room. 

The droids were cool on her heated skin, and as first one child, and then another came screaming into the world, constellations on her right ribs and twin suns along her throat bloomed across her skin, bubbling and laughing and joyful. She wept, bitter tears in knowing she would never hold her babes; watching with out-of-focus eyes as they were wrapped in soft blankets and held by other people. 

“Luke,” she whispered when Obi-Wan told her of her son, her golden sun, all the goodness of her Anakin wrapped up in baby-soft skin. “Leia,” she wept when Bail Organa proclaimed her daughter, her daughter bound for the stars, all of Anakin’s stubbornness in her dark brown eyes. 

Oh her babies, her _babies_ ; she shook and she cried and she tried to reach out, but already they were so far away. She hoped her Ani felt them; she hoped _her_ Ani came back from that dark place he had fallen into, so that he could remember the _light_ and the _good_ and raise their children how they dreamt of raising them. 

“Obi-Wan,” she whimpered, and he was there again; drawn and older than he should have ever been. “Obi-Wan, there’s still _good_ in him, I know it. Please—please, don’t—”

Obi-Wan held her hand, and she felt her voice die. In the distance, two infants wailed as their mother died; a sun and a moon clinging on to one another as tight as they could before they were dragged away. 

~+~

He felt his Padmé die; a bloody scream across his skin, and he cried out with it in the operation room. 

The pain was too great for him to feel, even for a moment, two new soulstars form over his wretched, ruined flesh. 

The gaping hole in his chest overpowered all. 

He’d lost them all.

~+~

He found them again. 

His body tingled and burned from electrocution, and he was dragged through the hallways of a crumbling battle station by the boy who called him father. His wretched, ruined skin barely reacted to him, but he thought he felt it, beyond the open chasm in his chest where his Padmé had once lived. 

He stumbled and fell, and he knew he was doomed. He held his son’s face in his hands, voice shaking as he asked him to remove the mask. Cold air hit his face and he breathed out a shaky breath. 

“You were right, son,” he said, voice worn; his boy who looked so much like his mother stared back at him tearfully, and he tried to smile for him. “You were right.” 

He could not say thank you. He lost the strength to try, and he finally succumbed to the black hole and was lost.

~+~

Han Solo was an overpowering shower of stars over her back; a collection of moons and stars down his arms. He was a big personality with a big smile and a big ego, and they loved him, they loved him, they _loved him_. 

Leia married him and Luke lived with them and together the three of them were happy, as finally the war and all their problems seemed to die down. 

And it was happiness, such happiness. 

Over the years, new stars formed on their skin; stars representing a new generation of hope. They compared and they wondered and they kept together. Luke spoke of starting the Jedi Order anew; making it better and less constricting than the last; Leia politicked and kept a level head, watching the galactic world and praying that the peace they fought and bled and killed for would last her entire lifetime. Han travelled, but he always kept an ear to the ground; making sure his Skywalker twins never did anything too crazy. 

When Ben Solo-Organa was born, they all compared their stars to his, and they loved him, they loved him, they _loved him_. 

(He broke their hearts.) 

~+~

Rey stepped up to the man in the cloak, looking out over the ocean; an ancient weapon in her hand, the hug of constellations squeezing along her ribs as comfort and constriction both. 

She watched the old, hunched figure turn around slowly, pushing back a hood so that he could look at her and she could finally see the world-weary face of a legend in the flesh. 

Together they stood at the precipice of change; the old generation of hope and the new, one desert child to another. 

She gave him a trembling smile. 

“I believe this is yours.”


End file.
